Here’s why Guinsoo’s Rageblade was disabled in the LCK Finals

If you were watching the LCK Finals over the weekend, you might have heard LCK commentator Chris “Papa Smithy” Smith’s brief statement that Rageblade was disabled on Jhin for patch 8.6, but still technically buy-able. In case you didn’t, here’s a clip of what he said.

In the video, Smith explains that on Patch 8.6 in the LCK, Guinsoo’s Rageblade was disabled for Jhin, but that the item was still available for players to buy. If they did happen to buy it, they would be forced to return to base, sell the item, and take the gold loss that came with it. All players were made aware of this fact and agreed to play the game under those conditions.

If that all sounds a little strange to you, don’t worry, it is. Most often, if an item is bugged on a patch, it will be disabled by Riot for professional play, live servers, or both. In this case though, the bugged item simply wasn’t disabled.

So, what exactly was the bug with Jhin and Rageblade? Well that’s a little more complicated. Basically, the version of Rageblade that was reworked and released back in Patch 8.6 had some unintended interactions with Jhin’s passive that could result in him reaching upwards of 3000 attack damage in some games. If you want an exact breakdown of all the math that goes into it, you can check out this longer explanation.

While this certainly seems like a bug, the truth is it might just be an unintended interaction that Riot has quite figured out a way around yet. As pointed out by Reddit user Naerlyn, the combination’s strength really hasn't’ changed much as of Patch 8.7 and it doesn’t seem like 8.8 will bring any new fixes.

Whether or not this will mean that the item is disabled in future competitive games, or if it was simply a one-time situation for the LCK Finals remains to be seen, but I’m sure we’ll hear something from Riot ahead of the Mid-Season Invitational in May.